The Philosophy of Charles Travis

The work of Charles Travis belongs to the analytical tradition, yet is also radically at odds with many assumptions characteristic of the tradition. Such an approach, while being at odds with some dominant strains of thought, does speak to a strand of the analytical tradition running from Frege, through Cook Wilson, Wittgenstein, and Austin, up to aspects of contemporary thinkers as diverse as Chomsky and McDowell. This volume is the first of its kind. It collects thirteen previously unpublished papers, including one of the last papers of the late Hilary Putnam, that tackle a range of issues arising in Travis’s work, offering both critical and positive responses. The volume also includes detailed replies by Travis to each of the papers and an introductory chapter by the editors that situates Travis’s ideas in the context of contemporary philosophy of language and mind. The volume divides into three sections, relating to language, thought, and perception. Topics covered in detail include: the character of linguistic and perceptual representation; the nature and evidential role of intuitions; Gottlob Frege; Ludwig Wittgenstein; the role of context in fixing speech content; and the structure of thought.